In order to get thinner, a lot of laptops nowadays have abandon Blu-ray drive. If you want to play your Blu-ray collection on your laptop, then you are going to have to get an external Blu-ray drive. While this sounds like unnecessary expense, it does help make it easier for you to watch your Blu-ray/DVD collection. With a Blu-ray drive, not only can you watch Blu-ray disc on your laptop, you can also rip Blu-ray disc with it if you need. If you are in need of an external Blu-ray drive, below are several Blu-ray drives on the market that you can use to rip Blu-ray discs.

Best Blu-ray drive for ripping Blu-ray discs

Below are the top sellers in external Blu-ray drive on Amazon.

No.1. Pioneer BDR-XD05B

The Pioneer BDR-XD05B is a slim and compact external Blu-ray drive. You can easily pack it in your bag with your laptop. It’s also a Blu-ray burner. You can use it to burn videos to a blank disc. It supports BDXL/BD/DVD/CD, and it comes with CyberLink Media Suite 10 Windows software for you to play Blu-ray discs on Windows so you don’t have to spend extra money on getting a Blu-ray player program. And it supports the faster USB 3.0. If you need a compact USB Blu-ray drive that can not only play Blu-ray discs but also burn videos, this is the one.

No.2. ASUS BW-16D1X-U

The ASUS BW-16D1X-U has a larger size body than the previous one from Pioneer, but other specs are very similar to Pioneer BDR-XD058. It supports USB 3.0, supports both Windows and macOS and has 16X writing speed. The diamond-shaped design gives it a unique look, which kind of looks like the HTC Diamond. If you care about efficiency, go with this one. It’s an excellent choice for external Blu-ray drive for laptop.

No.3. Pioneer Electronics USA Slim External Blu-Ray Writer (BDR-XU03)

The Pioneer BDR-XU03 is a super slim Blu-ray writer and viewer that works on both Windwos and macOS. It has a Magnesium body that gives the drive a sleek and premium look. Besides the premium and slim body, it’s also very powerful. 6X writing speed and support for USB3.0 ensure that Blu-ray disc writing would be fast. But the $160.93 price tag is significantly higher than the above two.

How to rip Blu-ray after getting a Blu-ray drive

With the right Blu-ray drive, you can read Blu-ray discs on your laptop, but that doesn’t mean you can play them. On Windows 8 and above, you’ll need a dedicated Blu-ray player to play the Blu-ray disc on your computer. Some Blu-ray player programs are not free, but there are some excellent free Blu-ray players. If you need, check out Leawo Blu-ray Player, it’s a free and high quality Blu-ray player.

If you want to watch your Blu-ray collection on your mobile devices or watch them on your laptop more conveniently, you can rip them to your laptop. Here’s one program to do that: Leawo Blu-ray Ripper. Coming from Leawo, a well-known media processing software developer, Leawo Blu-ray ripper is one of the best Blu-ray ripping programs you can find. It can rip all kinds of Blu-ray discs and it provides a lot of output options. For example, it can output 4k videos and videos in all kinds of popular formats. It also has a built-in video editor for you to tweak the video. Below is the tutorial for using the said program to rip Blu-ray to laptop.

Step 1. As the program is integrated into Leawo Prof.Media, so when you have the program downloaded and installed in your laptop, you will see the Prof.Media icon on your desktop. Just fire it up and you will find the Blu-ray ripper icon on it. Click on the Blu-ray ripper icon to launch Leawo Blu-ray Ripper.

Step 2. There’s an Add Blu-ray/DVD icon that sits in the upper left-hand corner. Click on it and select Add from CD-ROM. If you’ve previously connected your Blu-ray drive to your computer and put the Blu-ray disc in your Blu-ray drive, you should be able to load the disc content.

Step 3. If you’ve successfully loaded the disc content, then you will be redirected to the ripping mode choosing interface. There are 3 different sections on it. The 3 buttons for you to decide what content to rip from the Blu-ray disc, the title list that shows you all the titles in the disc and a preview window for playing the videos in the disc. The 3 buttons, namely Full Movie, Main Movie and Custom Mode, are used for different purposes. Full Movie is used to rip the whole disc, so all the video clips in the disc will be included in the output. Main Movie is used for ripping the main movie. Custom Mode is the one mode for you to manually select the videos you need in the disc. You can choose the titles you need from the title list below the buttons when you choose Custom Mode.

Step 4. After you decide the content to rip in the disc, the titles you’ve chosen will be added to the file list and ready for ripping and converting. But before starting the ripping process, you need to choose an output format for the videos. Above the video file list are several buttons. We need the second button from the right for selecting the format for the output video. On the said button is the default output format. Click on this button and a menu would appear with 3 more buttons. The Edit and Change button on it are what we will be needing next. Click on Change and it will open the Format List. In it you can find all kinds of popular formats and some presets optimized for some mainstream electronic products like PlayStation and Xbox game consoles, iPhone, iPad and more. To set a format as default, a simple click on it would be sufficient.

Step 5. Returning to the video list, this would be the final step. Move your mouse onto the green Convert button on top of the file list and click on it to summon a sidebar. On the sidebar you can find the output directory and a Convert button. The output path is where the output file will be saved in and the Convert button is the trigger for starting the ripping process. Set the output path and click on the Convert button to rip your Blu-ray disc.

It’s easy to find the best Blu-ray drive for ripping a Blu-ray disc on Amazon. The right external Blu-ray drive can help you easily have your Blu-ray discs digitized for playback on mobile devices. In case you need it, here’s how you can rip Blu-ray to MP4 to play on your mobile handsets.